Nigerian held for duping ex-CBI official of Rs 36 lakh

A Nigerian has been arrested for allegedly duping a retired CBI official last year of around Rs 36 lakh in Delhi after posing as a woman on social media, police said on Tuesday.

The accused, Arthur Okeke, 33, a resident of Chander Vihar was nabbed from the Outer Ring Road on Monday. He was also arrested by the Jaipur police in a cheating case recently, the police said.

According to the police, the official complained that he became friends with the accused, who posed as a woman named Grace Dennis on Facebook.

She informed him that her mother was suffering from serious aliment and was admitted in a hospital in India, while she was stuck at the Mumbai airport due to some documentation, the police said.

Last August, the man got a phone call from an unknown number and the caller posed himself as a customs officer and asked him to submit some amount for clearance. He deposited Rs 35.80 lakh in nine different bank accounts, said Deputy Commissioner of Police (West) Monika Bhardwaj.

The contact numbers of the accused were put on surveillance and bank account details were obtained. Through technical specification, the accused was identified as Okele, Bhardwaj said.

Raids were conducted in Jaipur, Ajmer, Agra, Aligarh and many other places in Delhi, but Okeke could not be traced as he frequently changed his mobile phones and SIM cards. The accused was later nabbed from the Outer Ring Road, the DCP said.

Okeke came to India in 2014. Later, he, along with his accomplices, allegedly started duping people on Facebook. They posed as a girl or woman living abroad, the officer said.

After befriending people on the Internet and, at times, over phone calls, they would dupe people by seeking money for payment of customs duty on some pretext, the officer said.

Raids are on to nab the other accused who posed as the customs officer over phone, the police added.